


The World Turned Upside Down

by runningscissors



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Introspection, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Pete's World (Doctor Who), Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:34:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24493573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningscissors/pseuds/runningscissors
Summary: "He’s the Doctor, and nothing can change that. He’s a scientist, an explorer, and he has a whole new world to explore with the only person he wants to explore it with."The Doctor and his final frontier.
Relationships: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	The World Turned Upside Down

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2013 for challenge 007 at then_theres_us @ LiveJournal.

The sand is mucky beneath him, and he can feel his feet slowly sinking, water seeping into his plimsolls. The wind feels raw on his face like his skin is a bundle of nerves—a residual effect of the quasi regeneration, no doubt. 

But wait, can he even call this regeneration? It certainly has the same physiological feeling to it. 

That hand, his hand, just sitting there. It had only been a pipe dream, he thought, a last desperate fight for existence. Just a tweak to the genetic coding and a regenerative shot of life, and then...well even he couldn’t have predicted that this would be the outcome. 

He’d known what the plan was, and he’d wanted it, he still does. But to actually see his beautiful ship (and it is _his_ ship - as much as it’s that two-hearted git’s) to see it disappear for the very last time is even more gut-wrenching than he had braced himself for. The TARDIS is gone. He’ll never see it again. He’ll never see anything of the Time Lords or Gallifrey again. He’s still yet to decide if that’s a blessing or a curse. Home is where the heart is they say- all though he’s not sure who they are- and his home and hearts have been the TARDIS for so very long, that it almost feels incomprehensible that she’s really gone. But he doesn’t have that anymore, hell, he doesn’t even have all his hearts anymore. 

The wind picks up now, and strands of Rose’s tousled hair tickle at his neck. He turns his head to her at the same moment she does to him, and he can read it all on her face. The pain, the despair, the confusion all mixed with a smidge of awe. 

Their eyes meet for a moment before a tear runs down her cheek, and she lets go of his hand, stumbling a few steps away. 

“I can’t believe this,” she chokes out, pushing her hands through her hair in frustration. “I can’t believe this is happening to me again.” 

That ever-familiar feeling of guilt is pooling in his stomach now, as Rose both breaks down and holds herself together all at the same time. It had been a genius play of pure manipulation on all three variations of Time Lord’s parts. His other self set Rose up so devastatingly perfect; had known precisely what to say to sell this scheme of theirs that it makes him feel sick to know that same man is him. But to leave them here, on this same bloody beach, and once again deny Rose the closure she so desperately needed, is crueller than even he had thought his other self capable of. What’s worse is that he sees the logic in leaving it this way, for his other self to sacrifice this final moment to ensure that Rose would make the choice he wanted for her. No, he changes his mind; what’s worse yet is that he’s perversely grateful- he just resents the fact that he had to use those precious three words against her to seal the deal. 

His eyes flicker to Jackie, who’s got her arms wrapped tight around herself, that look of motherly concern on her face. 

“Rose,” he calls, a lump forming in his throat. He wants to comfort her, tell her he understands why she’s upset, but her name is all he can get out. For the first time in such a long time, he’s been entirely upfront with her. He wants her, just her, and to see her shutting down… 

What will he do if she rejects him? 

Waves crash the shore, and he watches Rose as she stares out to the water. It feels like an eternity, but eventually, she turns to him, her lips firmly set and eyes rimmed red.  
  
“C’mon,” she sighs almost resignedly, stretching out her hand in invitation, “let’s get out of here.” 

+

The first thing that greets him when he wakes again is an expanse of white. A ceiling. He blinks, groaning as the light overwhelms his vision, and the cogs of his mind begin to grind once more. As his mind is calculating and recalculating, there is a different layer of awareness, one that is telling him that he’s regaining consciousness.  His hands hesitantly reach up to cover his face. His fingers skim across, finding the long ridge of his nose, the narrow set of his eyes, his thin upper lip, that wonky left ear and sideburns. His hands then fly to his chest, feel out the quick pounding of his left heart through his clammy skin, and the deafening silence of his right. One heart; that’s right, he has one heart. His senses feel dulled like he’s full of cotton batting, but his heart, his single heart, is battering against him. The sound seems to echo through him now in a way it never did before. 

Fingers are combing back fringe from his forehead, and he tilts his head to see as Rose brushes back his hair once more. Rose, her name once again, the first thing he wakes to, and as the world blinks into existence, he looks up to find her staring down at him. Rose with her wide, gloriously dark eyes that could never hide anything. It’s the most improbable and loveliest déjà vu he’s ever had.  She has a small concerned frown, and it’s like that first breath you take when you wake and realize it’s all not been a dream; that you’ve made it through the night. He thinks there is nothing in this world or the next that he won’t rip apart to see this face again. 

He knows that now. 

“Hello,” she mumbles softly, her thumb rubbing at his temple. 

“Hello,” his voice cracks, hoarse with lack of use. He rubs a hand over his face, pulling back at the damp feel of his forehead. “This is becoming a pattern of ours. Me, waking up-” he glances down his chest, “wearing someone else’s jimjams, and you patting down my brow with a cool flannel.” 

She laughs, quickly wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. Her mouth opens, and then she stops, sucking in a quick breath as a tear rolls down her cheek. 

“Oh,” he says quickly, reaching to wipe away her fallen tear. 

Rose rubs at her face, “Sorry, I’m a bit of a mess right now, is all.” She throws him a watery smile. “How are you feeling? Do you want a cuppa? I can put on a brew. I know the last time you regen-” she pauses, brow furrowing, “Um, last time that tea helped you.” She makes a move to slide off the bed, and suddenly everything within him seizes. His hand shoots out, pulling her back beside him. 

“Don’t go,” he breathes. “Let’s... let’s just stay here a bit longer.” She hesitantly settles back down, and on impulse, he takes her hand, his fingers threading through hers before laying them flat against the sheet. “Is this okay?” he asks, voice still lodged in his throat. 

Rose stills for a moment then hesitantly nods. 

“How long have I been sleeping?” his body feels heavy, even lying in bed. 

“Almost a day, I’d reckon.” 

The wait for the extraction hanger plane Torchwood had sent had been an uncomfortably tense affair, with Jackie zinging questions at him a mile a minute until he had patted her on the hand with a firm, “Jackie, hush,” and that had more or less been that. The walk from the car to Pete Tyler’s stinkin’ big mansion and the exhaustion that had overwhelmed him had been another thing entirely. The other details are a haze after that. 

“Hmm, just the lingering physical effects of the big day I’d image,” he says. “A cup of good strong Jackie Tyler tea, and I’ll be right as rain.” 

She gives a small, tight grin, eyes still a little anxious looking. “I just don’t get it,” she softly mumbles. 

He frowns, “what do you mean?” 

“I just— I—” she swallows, her fingers trembling slightly. “How are you just lying in my mum’s house with one bloody heart? It’s just so impossible, I can’t wrap my head around it.” 

“Well, you know me. I’ve always liked impossible.” 

Rose scowls, her focus on him becoming severe. “Doctor, you don’t do domestic, remember? You told me that countless times, and yet I’m supposed to just accept that you’re suddenly happy being mortal and without the TARDIS…” She trails off, looking away briefly to blink away more tears. She lets out a watery breath and turns back to him. 

“No,” he says slowly, his thumb running along the side of her palm. “You’re right. I...” his words die out, and Rose flexes her hand beneath his. It’s an overwhelming feeling having Rose beside him, her hand in his. He had been resigned that this was something he was just simply to never have again. He had even begun to make peace with it until, well, until it had all started to unravel on him. He’d forget the precise sound of her laughter or the number of teeth he could count every time she smiled brightly at him, and he’d throw himself back at the universe; desperate to ignore, to just get lost. Always moving, never stopping, even when he knew he should. He’s worn down, he’s tired, tired of the game, of never stopping. He doesn’t want to run anymore. For once, he wants to stand still.

He pauses and looks at his hands. These long, thin fingers which had taken control over time itself; these hands which had done more terrible, inexcusable things than he can even count. These hands are capable of so much more. The last time he looked at these hands, he thought it would be the final time. 

And then it hadn’t been, and Donna had given him everything he’d needed to start again. Oh, Donna, she was always so good at that. 

Does he want to tell her? Explain all the terrible things that had happened; that he had done since they’d been parted to get here. All that should matter is that he’s here now, shouldn’t it? That finally he has the chance to have the life _he_ , not the whole, the Doctor, protector of the Universe; the Lonely God; the Oncoming Storm, but he the individual man, has craved. Farringham had been his undoing. He had seen it, had felt it- the pure pleasure of love, of the well and true slow path, and those feelings had wormed their way in so deep he feared they were never to be removed. He’d had that with Rose, he had realized in hindsight, as much as he ever thought he was going to, and when he’d lost that, it had been devastating, only to lose it all again so soon after. In Rose and all she brought with her: Jackie and Mickey, and the Powell Estate in early twenty-first century London, they’d all become a touchstone. Something to come back to; to feel grounded to. Rose had opened up her life to him and enveloped him fully within it.  Joan; Jenny; It had all meant something that he had been too frightened to admit to himself; clearly, something his full Time Lord self was still too scared to face as evidence of yesterday’s outcome. But that’s his twisted relationship with time, there always seems to be too much of it, or simply not enough. Time- forever to be his greatest constant and greatest adversary, it seemed.

“I was regenerating,” he finally says, spreading his other hand across the sheet to balance out their entwined ones. “I was dying, and all I could think of was that I wanted to stay just as I was. And when I woke up with Donna in the TARDIS, I had this overwhelming feeling that I wanted to live. Not just continue on as I was doing, bouncing from one disaster to another, but actually live. I’ve always sought out adventure, but you look around one day and realize that you’re not five-hundred years old anymore and that you’re tired of constantly getting away by the skin of your teeth.” 

“You sound like an old man,” Rose says quietly, her free hand coming to cover their entwined ones. 

“I am an old man. Or _was_ I suppose now.” He says. “As a Time Lord, I’ve lived far too long. I simply move on.” 

He reaches for her hand, pressing it flat over the right side of his sternum, and watches as her expression changes from that hard look to something softer and unsure. Her brows knit together, her fingers spreading over the empty right side of his thoracic cavity. Maybe if she feels it, she’ll understand. This isn’t him being stuck on a planet with her as they had faced all that time ago; this is him getting to live out his deepest, darkest fantasy. He’s here because he loves her and wants to spend his life with her because he can do that. For once, he gets to do what he wants. Human love is inherently selfish that way, which is part of what makes it so beautiful. The only thing that separates him from the him with two hearts is that he actually can spend the rest of his life with Rose. The longing to though, well, that stretches across the Void to both Doctors. 

“I don’t need the TARDIS anymore; I’ve had over nine hundred years of that. I just want you, Rose.” Her lip quivers, and he squeezes their entwined hands. “I’ve always wanted you. I was just too afraid of what would happen after you were gone, and I was alone again.” 

Rose says his name, her voice quivering slightly as he meets her eyes. “Doctor,” she says, her voice filled with emotion. “Doctor, I-”

He can’t let her finish her though because he’s had this bottled up and pushed down into the far recesses of his mind, and now that he’s here, it’s spilling out of him, and he can’t stop. This must be the Donna parts of him. She never could stop until she’d said everything on her mind. 

Blimey, he’s being self-reflective, and so in tune with his feelings. Isn’t that strange? It feels like a weight lifting from his chest as he unburdens himself. His feelings were an anvil slung around his neck, pulling him deeper and deeper into himself. But he can breathe now. Like Atlas freed from the weight of the world on his back. 

“When you shot yourself into space in that big cannon of yours, what were you looking for? Did you want the TARDIS, a ship to go gallivanting around all of time and space?” 

Rose looks at him, confused, “No, I told you, the stars were going out, and the dimensional walls were crumbling, and Torchwood knew—” she halts mid-sentence, a sudden pained looked on her face. She’s clued in to what he knew the second she started speaking. She’s never spoken to him about it. This must have been a post-shot-by-a-Dalek talk. What else has he missed? 

She breathes out a sigh like she’s come to some kind of internal decision about something. “I love the life I had with you; the TARDIS, the travelling, but I was looking for you. I wanted to be back with you.”  
  
“Exactly,” he stresses, “you weren’t looking for the TARDIS. The TARDIS doesn’t matter because, ultimately, it’s never been about the TARDIS, has it? It’s always just been about the two of us together.”  
  
That feels like vastly oversimplification of what this is; what the TARDIS was to them, but he can’t focus on the TARDIS because he feels heartsick at the thought of her. 

_Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it._

Rose pulls her hands from his tight grasp, that pained expression back on her face. 

“Has it, though?” she asks. “On the beach when yo— he, he—” she stands up now, furiously wiping at her eyes. She lets out a shaky breath. “When I was looking for you, I went through so many time streams and different dimensions that had already been destroyed by either Davros or the consequences of not having you to save them, and I knew if I just found you, it would be okay.” 

He can’t imagine the horrors she’s seen. It took all he had just to keep one universe from imploding daily, and most of the time, he still royally mucked it up. But without the help of the Time Lords, even just the last surviving one… well, he doesn’t want to think of what other possibilities lie out there. 

“I had this vision that I’d find you, still you in your trainers and wild hair,” she throws a small, melancholy smile his way, “and that it would be like we’d never been parted. We’d just pick up exactly as we were. I never allowed myself to think beyond that because I knew that just wasn’t you. And I was fine with that, because the life we led together was important, and I knew you loved me in your own way. But then nothing about finding you turned out as I imagined…” they both give small wistful smiles at that. 

Rose shrugs, biting at her nail in thought. The sight of her doing that makes his heart swell because here she is, standing in front of him, small nervous ticks and all, and despite the years apart, she’s suddenly nineteen-years-old, and he’s smitten all over again. 

The air feels heavy, full of Rose’s yet unsaid words. He feels like a right mug sitting here in bed as she paces the floor, but he knows he needs to give her this. This time and attention to say what’s on her mind. He certainly owes her this. 

“I was always going to end up back here, wasn’t I?” she finally says, like she’s already worked out the answer. He’s sure she has, she’s no doubt been stewing on this the whole time they’ve been back while he slept away. The thought that she would grow old and die right in front of his eyes, and he would be forced to carry on without her was utterly unbearable. His time without Rose had shown him what he’s capable of in the zenith of his grief, let alone the horrors that could happen if he succumbed to it. 

“Yes,” he feels ashamed, even more so when Rose simply nods, jaw jutted and proud like she’s challenging him to deny her. He can’t. Of course, it was always going to end with Rose. “It would have broken me to see you fade away before my eyes. You have no idea how hard it was to move on without you, and that was knowing you were safe in a parallel world. I only barely survived that first year without you thanks to Martha, I don’t think I cou— that he could survive to lose you again like that.” 

He scratches at the back of his head; this double existence was going to be tricky with the pronouns. 

“But knowing you’re here, potentially living a life filled with-” he pauses, words caught in his throat, “happiness and love, then you’re eternal to him. You’re like Schrödinger’s cat, Rose!” He exclaims, the metaphor getting away on him faster than his brain is telling him not to compare her to a scientific experiment in quantum mechanics, let alone a dead cat. 

Rose laughs at this despite herself but sobers quickly as she bites at her lip. 

“Then all that stuff in Norway yesterday, was that all just a show? Just a way to trick me into staying? Play my emotions against me so I’d be distracted, and he could sneak off?” 

The raw sound to her voice sends his stomach crashing to his feet, and he’s up, pushing duvets and sheets out of his way to get to her. Once up, though, his body has other plans, and he lists into Rose as his legs give out from under him. She quickly catches his shoulders and steers him back to the bed. However, just as quickly, he pulls at her arm, so she’s now sat beside him on the bed and takes her hand into both of his.   
  
“Doctor, are you-”

“Never mind that,” he says hastily, “Rose, listen to me.” She meets his gaze, eyes wide and dark, rimmed red from tears, and she’s so lovely in this moment. 

“Rose, what happened on the beach was terrible, and you’ve every right to be furious with me because you’re right, we were trying to persuade you to stay with me.” He lifts one hand to cup her cheek, and he can feel the sticky wet tracks of her tears and the warm, soft touch of her skin. “But that doesn’t change the fact that every word I said is true. I have one life, and I desperately want to spend it with you.” 

Rose’s lips twitch, eyes staring, dark and unsure now. “And…” she begins biting at her lip, “the other part, did you mean that as well?” 

He pauses, dragging his thumb against her skin. “That I love you?” She nods mutely, body tensing beneath his hands like she’s bracing herself.  How could he have done this to her? How could he have weaponized these words and make her doubt it for even a millisecond? 

“I do, I love you, Rose.” He says now, as Rose’s lovely lips bloom into a real smile, a smile that makes his heart, his one heart clench tight. “I have _always_ loved you – I loved you on that bloody awful beach that first time and I love now.” 

Rose turns her face into his hand, lips brushing gently against his palm, and he’s so overwhelmed by the feel of it, of her, as he moves to catch her mouth with his, that he barely registers the knocking on the other side of the door. 

“Sweetheart,” Jackie calls, “everything all right? He hasn’t turned back into something funny, has he?” 

Rose rolls her eyes, and he groans in exasperation, his body slumping back onto the bed as Rose gets up to answer the door. He’d forgotten Jackie’s uncanny ability to turn up at the worst moment.

\+ 

Later, after Rose has shooed her mother away and with the moment rather thoroughly ruined, she leaves him to freshen up.

He stares at his reflection, the wonky ear, the right eye that’s fractionally smaller than the left, his brows, his cheekbones — all as they should be. His tongue looks different, the taste pores smaller and even in size along the epithelium, but maybe that’s because his tastebuds are different. Of all the bodies to genetically double, he’s pleased it’s this one. Arguably him at his most handsome and youthful. And since he’s mortal now, it helps to start with a body in its prime, rather than some of the old codgers he’s previously been. 

For all he looks the same, though, he knows he is different from the man Rose knew. So much has happened since they’d been separated. Would Rose see that and be disappointed that he isn’t the exact man- metacrisis aside- that she’d first fallen in love with? He has to trust that Rose won’t care, she didn’t the first time- and if he could believe in one thing, it would always be Rose.

And besides, he wasn’t the only one to change. Rose was so young when they had travelled together - certainly wise for her age, but all the same, barely out of teendom. One look at her now tells him how much she’s matured in the years they’d be separated. She’s sharp angles now, lean muscles, hardened where she was soft and youthful once. His pink and yellow girl. There’s a part of him that resents the change. He doesn’t resent that it’s happened per se, because that’s what humans do - they grow older, they change, whether that be their bodies, or their hair, or their tastes and preferences, they are always evolving - he just resents that he wasn’t there to watch her grow. Where once he knew everything about her- knew her better than the back of his manly hand, he dislikes that there are now things about Rose that he doesn’t have the definite answer to anymore. Does she still take her tea the same way? Does she still clap her hand over her mouth when she laughs so hard she snorts? Does she even still snort? Oh, he hopes she does. He’d loved that about her. 

The scent of Rose’s body wash still lingers from the shower she must have taken earlier, that familiar tangy smell of artificial grapefruit clinging to the air, and _oh_ under all these new layers of the unknown that lay between them, she still smells the same. A tube of mascara, a container of face cream, the messy squeeze of her toothpaste; the sight of them transport him. Beauty products littered across her bathroom vanity on the TARDIS. Her _pots and potions_ , he had once referred to them with a different face and disposition, and Rose had rolled her eyes. 

He is overcome at the sight of it, the smell of her everywhere, and in the privacy of this moment, he feels tears burning in his eyes. Tears of elation for the love he’d thought gone forever. Tears of frustration, pain, anger, and longing; the shamefaced heartsickness he’d carried along with him all this time; all he has lost to have her once more. His ship, oh his beautiful, brilliant ship. They fall in fat drops against the countertop, his shoulders sagging under the weight of it.  He doesn’t know why this is the moment that it hits him: delayed reaction maybe, his new human make-up going haywire perhaps, but it does all the same. The permanence of Rose being here, of their _togetherness_ once more — this feels more real in a way that nothing else has, not even the feel of her hand. These are details his mind would never have focused on, which grounds him. This is real, not some fever dream fantasy. She is flesh and blood, waiting for him to join her downstairs. 

He braces himself over the sink, his knuckles turning white against the countertop. He realizes then that he’s trembling, and he slowly lifts his eyes to glare at his reflection once more. 

_Don’t cock this up, space boy_ Donna says in his head, and he won’t. He won’t. 

Nothing is sorted, this new world is filled with unknowns. What will he do now with the years he has left? What does this new life with Rose look like?

He knows he wants there to be kissing this time around ( _he intends to bloody well more than to kiss her; he wants to dance and dance and dance)_ and running, of course, but the right kind - the fun kind, not the bad kind. Got to be careful now, one and done this time around. 

He wants to still be him, not John Smith or any other alias - the Doctor because that’s who he is. He’s the Doctor, and nothing can change that. He’s a scientist, an explorer, and he has a whole new world to explore with the only person he wants to explore it with. 

“Right.” He says to his reflection. “Here we go. _Allons-y_.” 


End file.
